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The E-Fusion Award
Launched
The competition was open to the following:
Entries included projects designed to sell, support, educate, underwrite, manage operations, handle claims or support any aspect of conducting an insurance or reinsurance enterprise. We asked judges to make their determinations based not only on the creativity and resourcefulness employed, but ultimately on whether a project succeeds in meeting its business mission and furthering the business of insurance. One requirement was that the project had to be in actual use. Meet the Final Judges
Charles Johnston has 17 years of experience as an IT professional in the life and financial services industry. Prior to joining Meta Group in March 1999, he was senior vice president of operations for Phoenix Global Solutions, the technology consulting and outsourcing subsidiary of Phoenix Home Life Mutual Insurance. Previously, he was director of emerging technologies and also had responsibility for the financial and operations areas of variable insurance products. During his career with various organizations, Johnston has worked with field systems, variable life and annuity administration systems, and decision support, data mining, e-commerce and groupware solutions. He holds a bachelor of arts degree from the University of Connecticut. Alan S. Rutkin is a litigation partner with Rivkin Radler, Uniondale, N.Y. He has expertise in insurance coverage disputes involving environmental matters and other complex claims. Rutkin is a frequent speaker on litigation and insurance topics. He also chaired the New York State Bar Association Federal Civil Practice Program. Rutkin has written on many aspects of insurance coverage litigation including a defense litigation column for Best's Review for more than 10 years. He has also written for the Federation of Insurance & Corporate Counsel and other leading publications. The American Society of Business Press Editors gave him an award for Editorial Excellence. Rutkin was admitted to practice in the State of New York in 1984, the United States District Court for the Eastern Districts of New York in 1985, and the Southern District of New York in 1986. He is a member of the American Bar Association (Litigation and Insurance Practice sections) and the New York State Bar Association. Rutkin has a doctorate in law from Boston University School of Law in 1983 and his bachelor of arts degree, cum laude, with honors in political science and a Becker Scholarship, from Union College (Schenectady, New York) in 1980. Madelyn Flannagan joined Independent Insurance Agents and Brokers of America in 1995, after 15 years as a senior account manager for a large Northern Virginia independent insurance agency. As IIAA's Vice President of Education and Research, Flannagan leads the national association's efforts to provide education, technology and research support to its state associations and member agents. Also, she oversees the Commission to Enhance Agency Value, a joint-agency company mission to develop and promote the use of IIAA's Best Practices tools. Flannagan serves as IIAA's liaison to Future One's Research Task Force and has been instrumental in the publication of several consumer and marketing studies that help insurance agents and companies better understand the insurance buyer. Her work with the Task Force includes the recently released 2000 Agency Universe Study, a complete demographic profile of the Independent Agency System. She works closely with IIAA's communications department to promote the virtues of the independent agency system and to translate insurance into "real life" in a variety of mediums. John Kellington is the senior vice president and chief technology officer for The Ohio Casualty Group, a $1.5 billion property and casualty company headquartered in Fairfield, Ohio. Previously, Kellington was the chief architect and principal for IBM Global Services' National Insurance Practice. He held many positions during his 18-year career at IBM, including senior architect, client server architect, systems engineer, and industrial engineer. As a consultant with IBM, he led many high profile legacy migration projects for many large insurance corporations. Kellington's expertise stems around component-based architectures, high-volume transactional web environments, policy administration systems, legacy migration strategies, and organizational concepts to achieve success in the new age environment. Richard F. Connell, executive vice president and chief information officer of Selective Insurance Group, Inc., has oversight of the company's technology strategy, automation system development and e-Business technology, data processing operations, and voice and data communications. Before joining Selective in August 2000, Mr. Connell was chief technology officer for Liberty Mutual Insurance Group, where he was responsible for information technology direction and strategy, and architecture, platform, product and tool standards. He was also president of Liberty Mutual's software development subsidiary in Belfast, Northern Ireland. He previously worked for 23 years with Aetna Life and Casualty, where he held various information technology management positions both domestic and international. Mr. Connell holds a B.S. in business administration from Central Connecticut State University. He has been active in industry groups, including the National Electronic Information Corporation (NEIC), Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI), Society for Information management (SIM), and LOMA. Patricia L. Saporito is managing director, Insurance & Health Care Industry, for Teradata, a division of NCR Corp., where she helps customers leverage their information assets. Her responsibilities include business development, business strategy consulting and strategic alliances for data warehousing, business intelligence, customer relationship management and other analytic applications within the insurance and health-care industries. Prior to joining NCR, Ms. Saporito was vice president and practice director, Insurance Information Strategies, at META Group, a technology research firm. Previously, she ran her own consulting firm specializing in insurance marketing, market research and information management. She has more than 20 years of insurance-industry experience in information technology, marketing and claims, in both the primary and reinsurance sectors. Ms. Saporito is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and has been widely quoted and published in the trade press on insurance industry business, information and technology-related issues. She is a member of the CPCU Society Information Technology Committee, co-chair of the Insurance and Accounting Systems Association Technology Programs Committee and past president of the Society of Insurance Research. She holds a bachelor's degree from the Lubin Business School at Pace University in New York. Martin Schnabel received his B.A. from SUNY Buffalo in Business Management with a concentration in Finance. He later received his J.D. from New York Law School and is licensed to practice law in New York. Prior to coming to AEGIS Insurance Services Inc.("AEGIS Services") in 1994, Marty was the claims coordinator for environmental claims at AIG. He has been involved with the management of coverage litigation for over 12 years. While at AEGIS Services, Marty has been a featured speaker on various environmental topics including but not limited to: superfund litigation, MGP remediation cost recovery and Brownfield legislation. Over the last 2 years, Marty assisted in the creation of Aegislink.com., the Energy Portal of Associated Electric & Gas Insurances Services Limited (AEGIS) which provides a comprehensive line of insurance coverages and services to its members, the energy industry. The site allows AEGIS members to: Apply
for coverage on line; Currently Marty is managing directors & officers and employment practice liability actions for AEGIS.
Paul C. Tinnirello is executive vice president and chief information officer for the Information Services Division at A.M. Best Company. During his more than 20 years at A.M. Best he has been involved in all phases of IT and is currently responsible for all enterprise technology including corporate infrastructure, financial software product development and e-business/e-commerce development. He holds an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Kean University and a master's degree in software engineering from New Jersey Institute of Technology. He is a 2001 recipient of the NJIT Alumni Achievement Award. Paul is the author/editor of a series of IT books from Auerbach/CRC Press including the "Best Practice Series in Project Management" and "New Directions in Project Management." He regularly contributes to various IT industry publications on management trends in the e-commerce business sector and served as a graduate and undergraduate instructor for state and local colleges in New Jersey. Paul is also a member of the academic advisory board for the College of Computing Sciences at NJIT and was a founding member of the Software Management Association. His past work experiences include Dupont Chemical, IFF and AT&T. Lee McDonald is vice president of communications at A.M. Best Company. He oversees the company's news publications, sales support and production teams. The publications all focus on the insurance industry and include Best's Review magazine, BestWeek, BestWire and BestDay, an online news service. He joined A.M. Best six years ago as editor of Best's Review. He spent 13 years with the Gannett Co. Marilyn Ostermiller is assistant vice president of News at A.M. Best Company. She is responsible for the editorial content of all A.M. Best news products including BestWire, a real-time news service; BestWeek, a weekly newsletter for the insurance industry; and Best's Review, a monthly magazine for the insurance industry. Prior to being appointed this position, Ms. Ostermiller was managing editor and then editor of Best's Review. Previously, Ms. Ostermiller was business editor of a daily newspaper owned by the Gannett Co. At the Round Table... A.M. Best Company. Inc. Ambest Road, Oldwick, NJ 08858 Contents of this site are subject to the A.M. Best Company Terms of Use. Questions or comments, please Contact Us. Copyright© 2002 A.M. Best Company, Inc. |
Introduced
in 2002
